Step 1:

BACKGROUND LAYER
To begin this tutorial, we'll first give ourselves a nice background
gradient. Now while most gradients are two-color, in Photoshop you can
actually make much more complex gradients by clicking on the Gradient
icon in the top left. You'll get a panel showing the gradient and you
can add more colors to it. In this case, I've used three colors to make a
gradual change from green to a set of blues.
Multi-color gradients can make for a stunning background. I've used a Radial Gradient and centered it to the bottom right.
The colors I've used are:
Color 1 - #2e5b15
Color 2 - #103533
Color 3 - #090e13

Step 2:

Now we need a letter. I've used the letter Q because it's my
favorite, particularly in this serifed style. This is from the font
Adobe Caslon Pro which I suspect came with my Photoshop
install--although who knows, I have way to many fonts to remember! Give
your letter a nice blue- green color. I've used #41a993.

Step 3:

Now after this, I basically went through all the different types of
layer styles and just experimented with them all. You can produce some
really wicked combinations with a bit of trying out. The main things I
did here were:

Decrease Fill Opacity to 20%. Fill Opacity makes the layer
transparent WITHOUT making the styles transparent. Note that this is
DIFFERENT to Opacity which just makes everything see-through.

Another thing I did was to try changing angles around, using different blending modes, and building the layers up slowly.

In any case, you can see all the exact settings by downloading the
sample PSD file from the link on the top right. You can then right click
that layer and hit Copy Layer Styles if you just want to paste it into
your own file.

Step 4:

So here is the result of my layer styles. It's a pretty cool-looking style.
Note that I've made it look as if the light is coming from the
bottom. This matches the direction of my gradient and gives a convincing
look. I've then also used a fainter set of highlights coming from the
other side. This vaguely matches how glass sometimes reflects light
about.

Step 5:

Now hold down Ctrl and click on the Q layer to select the shape and
add a white to transparent gradient coming from the bottom into a NEW
layer.
You can do color to transparent gradients by clicking on the Gradient
Tool in the top left and holding it down to see the whole set of
gradients (as we did earlier in this tutorial). The second one along is
color to transparency. It's SUCH a useful gradient. Great for this sort
of glass/plastic effects in particular.
Now fade this back by changing its blend mode to Overlay.

Step 6:

Now again hold Ctrl and select the Q layer. In a new layer, again add
a radial white to transparent gradient, this time coming from the top
down as shown.
Fade this one out by setting its opacity to 40%.

Step 7:

Now on the same layer as in the last step, draw an ellipse with the
Selection Tool and hit Ctrl+Shift+I to select the inverse. Then hit
delete to remove some of that gradient that we just drew.
Basically this makes the white suddenly stop and gives us a glassy
feel. Try cutting in different ways to see the different sort of effects
you can make.

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Step 8:

Now glass shines, so lets add some highlights to make it look really
shiny. You can do this by choosing the Custom Shape Tool (U) and then in
the top left click on Polygon and then on the down arrow to get options
as shown. Tick Star and make sure your indent is set to 99% to make
some nice little 5 pointed stars.
Now in a new layer with white as your foreground color, just add some
highlighted stars liberally about. It's best to place them on the most
highlighted parts of the Q to make it look like they are sparkles from
those highlights.